AUGUSTA, Maine — When Democrats released a welfare reform package earlier this month, Republicans called it an election-year attempt to capitalize on their popular arguments.
Still, there was agreement on one key proposal: Banning purchases of lottery tickets, tobacco, liquor and other items with cash assistance.
But that broke down in a legislative committee on Thursday, when Democrats backed one version of the bill and Republicans backed another assessing higher penalties for violators.
It’s nothing new: A welfare reform measure died in 2014 after similar divisions on penalties and last year, purchase ban bills from Republicans and Democrats failed in a divided Legislature.
That endangers welfare reform — the signature issue that Gov. Paul LePage won re-election behind in 2014. It also ensures that it’ll be a political bludgeon through the 2016 legislative elections, with a top Republican warning Democrats that they’ll face a test on whether they’re “more loyal to the people of their districts” who want reform “or more loyal to party leadership.”
The partisan divide on purchase bans is centered on penalties for violations: Republicans want more, and Democrats want less.
The Democrats’ version of the purchase ban bill, sponsored by Sen. Nate Libby, D-Lewiston, differs from Republicans’ version in one key way — penalties for people who “knowingly” make a prohibited purchase under TANF.
For the first offense, the penalty would be restitution. For a second offense, it would be a maximum suspension of three months. It would be a maximum of six months for subsequent violations.
Republicans are sticking to penalties in current TANF rules that don’t apply to purchases at stores, but to other intentional violations, such as making false statements on forms. The first violation means a one-year suspension, the second is two years and the third is a lifetime ban.
Democrats say that’s too harsh for a violation that may just entail someone buying a pack of cigarettes that may cost $7 with public money. They also want a commission to study point-of-sale technology, which Republicans don’t want.
“I just don’t see how it makes the system better to take $4,000 away from a family with kids over the first time someone buys a lottery ticket,” said Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, co-chairman of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.
But Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, the other committee co-chairman, said to suspend someone’s benefits the Maine Department of Health and Human Services would have to prove the person knowingly violated the law, so it’s unlikely that a one-time offender would be penalized.
He said the yearlong ban isn’t unreasonable for a knowing violator, calling the Democrats’ proposed penalties “toothless” and saying it’s “fake welfare reform.”
“For the amount of effort that has to go into proving that someone has intentionally violated the program,” Brakey said, “it’s not worth it to go through those administrative steps to say, ‘Now, you have to pay us back $11.’”
Democrats are trying to place welfare reform changes in the context of systemwide accountability, but they may have walked into a Republican political trap.
When Democrats released their plan, Republicans said they would be willing to work on Libby’s bill, but not on a Gattine proposal aiming to strengthen bridges to employment within the TANF program, with LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett pronouncing it dead on arrival.
On Thursday, Democrats on the committee voted for that bill. Republicans opposed it. Democrats also amended a welfare reform bill from House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, R-Newport, to transform it into a commission that would study childhood poverty in Maine, reflecting Democrats’ aim of keeping the welfare conversation comprehensive.
The number of Maine children living in extreme poverty rose from 17,000 to 23,000 between 2010 and 2014, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Maine Children’s Alliance has blamed a 60-month TANF limit passed in 2011 for reducing the number of children getting assistance by thousands.
Gattine said the LePage administration’s immediate rejection of his bill “signals to me that they do not understand what it takes to really reform this system and make it work,” but he wouldn’t say where he stood on the purchase bans alone.
“Because my hope is still to keep the conversation broadly based, I’m really hesitant to say how I would feel about the bans if it really just ended up turning into a conversation about the penalties,” he said.
If it becomes that, Republicans may win: The popularity of hawkish welfare arguments has been highlighted recently with LePage’s re-election and Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald’s 2015 re-election in a Democratic city.
Brakey said Democrats wouldn’t have come forward with a welfare reform package if they weren’t feeling pressure in their districts in an election year.
As the bill heads to the full Legislature, he said Democratic legislators face a test to see if they’re “more loyal to the people of their districts or more loyal to party leadership.” It’s not hard to imagine some version of that on a political flyer come fall.
“My hope is that we’re going to make the case so strongly that the people want welfare reform and that we’ll be able to peel off enough Democrats to pass the Republican report,” Brakey said.